Fr. JC Maximilian

Six hundred and thirteen. That is the number of laws or commandments that you can find in the first five books of the Bible, what we call the Pentateuch. At the time of Jesus there was a lot of debate among the Jewish teachers as to which of these commandments were the most important, so this is the question that they ask Jesus in today’s Gospel reading. Quite an overwhelming task, to pick one law, out of 613, as being the most important. Of course, Jesus is up to the task, even if His answer may not have been what the Pharisees were expecting.

The Pharisees probably not surprised at all when Jesus said that the greatest commandment is, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” However, Jesus immediately adds, as one being like it, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” This probably puzzled the Pharisees a great deal. Why? Not because they did not think that it was important to love their neighbors. They most certainly did show compassion on their neighbors. However, when Jesus said that love of neighbor was like love of God, He seemed to be putting it on par with the love of God. They wanted Him to give them one commandment which was more important than all the others, and Jesus gave them two.

Two is certainly a lot less that 613, but it still seems to allow for debating over which of the two is the most important. Today, this debate is often labeled as whether we have a vertical view of our Christian faith, or a horizontal view of faith.

The vertical view says that our faith has to do primarily with worshiping God, and anything that gets in the way with that needs to be removed, as a false idol. Such a view says that when we gather on Sunday to celebrate the Mass it is not a celebration of our humanity, or to be lifted up emotionally, or to experience fellowship. Rather, the reason we come together to celebrate Mass is to be still and know that God is still present among us, and to give Him thanks because we owe everything to Him. Of course it is true that all that we have is from God, therefore as a matter of justice it is fitting for us to give God thanks and praise. God should be the center of our lives, and Jesus Himself said that worship of God is our highest duty.

Case closed? Not so fast the proponents of the horizontal view of our Christian faith say. They point out that clearly Jesus was a friend of the poor and the oppressed. They note that Jesus often strongly challenged both the political and religious establishments of His time for too often not showing compassion to the poor, the sick, and the oppressed. If we are going to call ourselves Christians, then we need to do as Jesus did and fight for social justice.

Which of these two views of Christian faith is correct? Which of these two commandments – love of God, and love of neighbor – is most important? Jesus witnesses that both of these views are correct in what they affirm, but they are both wrong in what they ignore or deny. To be an authentic disciple of Jesus Christ we must be neither vertical nor horizontal but rather people of the crossroad. We need to live at where the vertical and the horizontal intersect, the crossroad. After all, we are People of the Cross.

Worship of God IS primary. However, if our worship of God has no consequences in our lives, if it does not cause us to live a NEW LIFE in Christ, then our worship is a hypocrisy. At the same time, if our service of others is not performed because of our love of God but because it gives us some type of noble and uplifting feeling or because it fits in with some human ideology that we endorse, then it is not a true service. It is mere philanthropy and not Christian love. Such philanthropy often leads to a de-humanization of those being served because it fails to recognize the fullness of the humanity of the poor or sick or oppressed. They are seen more as a cause, and not as the children of God, made in His image and likeness, that they have spiritual needs as well as physical ones.

Jesus lived at the crossroad, where the vertical and the horizontal meet. He also died there, on the Cross. As His followers we must also live, and die, at the crossroad.

This can seem like a very overwhelming task. How can we love this way, the way of the crossroad? The truth is, if it was just left up to us, we could not love as we should. We are too limited. We get tired and frustrated and impatient, and when that happens we do not love as we should. The only way to love at the crossroad is to remember that “God is Love.” As St. John says in one of his letters, it is not so much that we have loved God, but rather that God has first loved us. The great commandment is a confirmation that God has first loved us in such a way that it is now supremely possible for us to love Him and our neighbors as He demands us to love. We need to reflect on our experiences in everyday life and see the love of God right now, right here in our lives. We must relish in God’s love and be completely grateful for that Divine love. It will call to mind the times when because of our sinfulness we have been alienated from God, while at the same time filling us with the joy that comes from the Mercy of God who forgives us. Filled and conscious of God’s love for us, we will be able to love God with all our hearts, all our soul, and all of our mind because nothing else will fill us. And filled with the Love of God we will be imitators of Christ, loving all those around us as our brothers and sisters, all God’s children. It all happens at the Crossroad.

[His Excellency Robert Morlino, Bishop of Madison, WI]

One of the women with whom I worked, at my last assignment, is a good friend of Bishop Robert Morlino, of Madison, WI.  I think her husband and the bishop went to school together.  In any case, she first shared a recording of one of the bishop’s homilies, and I was very impressed with the context of his message.  Since then I have tried to follow whenever one of Bishop Morlino’s homilies appear online somewhere, and I have continued to be impressed by what a genuine shepherd he is in witnessing to the love of Jesus Christ.  I just came across a homily that he must have given in September of this year; actually the day that Senator Biden appeared on TV and gave his very poor understanding of the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion.  It is worth a listen, so I am sharing (I hope; the technology part often gets me in trouble) a link to a recording of Bishop Morlino’s Homily (HTML has conquered me again; I cannot figure out how to create the link to play the mp3 here, so instead the link will take you to the website where the mp3 is).  I pray for good shepherds like Bishop Morlino everyday. 

[These are reflections I made to our 7th & 8th grade Religious Education Classes]

A Reading from the Book of Genesis: (Gen. 18:1-8)

The LORD appeared to Abraham by the terebinth of Mamre, as he sat in the entrance of his tent, while the day was growing hot. Looking up, he saw three men standing nearby. When he saw them, he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them; and bowing to the ground, he said: “Sir, if I may ask you this favor, please do not go on past your servant. Let some water be brought, that you may bathe your feet, and then rest yourselves under the tree. Now that you have come this close to your servant, let me bring you a little food, that you may refresh yourselves; and afterward you may go on your way.” “Very well,” they replied, “do as you have said.” Abraham hastened into the tent and told Sarah, “Quick, three seahs of fine flour! Knead it and make rolls.” He ran to the herd, picked out a tender, choice steer, and gave it to a servant, who quickly prepared it. Then he got some curds and milk, as well as the steer that had been prepared, and set these before them; and he waited on them under the tree while they ate.

1. Tonight we are going to learn something about the Most Holy Trinity. To begin with, the Trinity is the most central Mystery of our Faith. Being a Mystery, even if we were to discuss it for a million evenings, we would never be able to say all that there is to know about the Trinity; so tonight we are just scratching the surface.

2. In discussing the Trinity, I am going to give you each a gift, that we are going to look at for our reflection. It has a copy of a famous icon, “The Most Holy Trinity,” by a Russian monk named Andrei Rublev, written in 1410. Rublev’s icon of the Trinity was unlike any other icon of the Trinity up to that point because he used the passage from the Book of Genesis that I just read to you as the text to base his icon.

3. One of the key points that Rublev picked up in that passage is that while Abraham looks up and sees three men standing nearby, when Abraham speaks to them he says, “Sir” the singular, and not “sirs” the plural. As Rublev correctly understood this indicates the most basic characteristic of the Trinity; while there are three Divine Persons, there is only one God. In the icon, this is indicated by three main things:

   1. First, while the icon is rectangular, when you look at it, there seems to be a circle around the three central figures. This unseen, but present circle, indicates the Divine Love that is the very essence of God and that binds the Three distinct Persons. The Father is the Lover, the Son is the Beloved, and the Holy Spirit is the Fruit of the Love.

   2. Second, all three figures have the same face; again, indicating their one Divine Nature as Three distinct persons.

   3. Lastly, they all are where blue garment, the color of the Heavens in iconography. Yet each wears something that also speaks of their own identity.

4. Now let’s look at each figure to see what we can learn about each of the Divine Persons in the Trinity. Let’s first look at the figure all the way to the right. We can see the blue garment, again representing His divinity, and we see Him also wearing green. While most of us, being from the Western or Roman tradition of the Catholic Church, think of red being the color of the Holy Spirit, in the Eastern tradition of the Church, which Rublev belonged to, the color of the Holy Spirit is green. Now, why do you thing that green would be a color of the Holy Spirit? Have you ever looked closely at a tree during the Springtime and noticed the green of the new leaves? Green is used to represent the new life that the Holy Spirit gives us. This is why in the Creed we refer to the Holy Spirit as the Giver of Life.

   1. Notice that the Holy Spirit touches the table. This indicates the “earthing” of the the Divine life. Think about the following words that are used at Mass, as the priest calls forth the Holy Spirit onto the bread and wine that will become the Body and Blood of Christ, “Lord, You are holy indeed, the fountain of all holiness.
Let Your Spirit come upon these gifts to make them holy….”

   2. Behind the figure of the Holy Spirit is a mountain. Mountains are common places where people have encounters with God. Just remember Moses encountering God in the burning bush on the mountain. Mountains are symbolic of places where heaven and earth come together.

   3. Lastly, the figure is inclined, that is bending forward, gazing towards the figure in the center, who we will turn to next.

5. The figure in the middle is of course wearing a blue garment, indicating His divinity, and He is also wearing a brown garment, representing the earth, and in this case His humanity. This is the figure of Jesus Christ in the icon. Notice that on His brown robe there is a gold stripe. This is a sign of His Kingship.

   1. The figure of Christ Jesus has His hand on the table and is pointing with two fingers. This points out for us that by Jesus’ two natures, being both fully Human and fully Divine, Jesus reveals the Trinity to us.

   2. The figure of Jesus points to a cup of wine. What do you think that this represents? The cup of His blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant between God and human beings.

   3. Behind this figure of Christ is a tree. This tree helps us call to mind several things from Scripture.

      1. First, it can be literally the Tree of Mamre, where the three angelic figures who encountered Abraham rested. This represents the importance of hospitality. Because of his and Sarah’s hospitality, Abraham is rewarded with a son. For the people of Abraham’s time, children were important not only for their own sake, but because they were seen as a way of living eternal life.

      2. The Tree also is there to remind us of the wood of the Cross. The Cross, the tree of death, becomes the tree of eternal life -
lost to humanity by the disobedience of Adam and Eve -
restored to us by the obedience of Jesus.

      3. The tree in the icon also calls to mind the Tree of Life described in the Book of Revelations (22:2) which bears fruit each month, and whose leaves are used for medicine.

   4. The figure of Christ is inclined to draw our gaze to the figure on the left.

6. The figure on the left of course represents the Father. Notice, that while He is also wearing a blue garment, most of it is hidden by His rose colored garment. This represents the fact that God the Father, the Creator of all, cannot be seen by human beings. Rather, as Jesus tells us, it is the Son who reveals the Father. Why is He where a Rose colored garment? When do the priests wear rose colored vestments at Mass? When we are more than half way finished with Advent and Lent, the two penitential seasons of the Church year. Rose is the color of the sky at dawn, just before the sun rises.

   1. The Father has both hands grasping His staff. This is a sign of His authority in heaven and on earth.

   2. Behind the figure of the Father is a house, the dwelling place of God. “In my Father’s House are many mansions – 
I go to prepare a place for you…” What is the promise for you in these words of Jesus?

7. Another important feature of Rublev’s icon, is that he has the three heavenly figures seated at table, with a cup on the table. Clearly this is a sign of Them seated at a meal, but not just the meal that Abraham had fixed for them. It is the meal of the Eucharist. In fact, if you follow the line of the legs of the two figures on the two ends, you will see they form the outline of a chalice. The Eucharist is the sign of the Communion, the oneness, of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

8. There is one last aspect of the icon that I would like to point out. Notice that the green robe of the Holy Spirit draped in front of the table, and that there is a piece missing from the table. This is the place for each of us. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, who gives us New Life, we are invited to enter into communion with the Trinity.

Not every question is an honest one.  In today’s Gospel reading, the Pharisees asks Jesus a dishonest question.  They were not really trying to ask Jesus for advise on a spiritual or moral issue.  Rather they were trying to trap Him; to get Him in trouble with the authorities.  If Jesus tells them to pay the taxes to Rome, they will undermine His reputation among the people by accusing Him of betraying the Jewish people by collaborating with the Romans.  If Jesus tells them not to pay the taxes to Rome, they will accuse Him to the Roman authorities of treason and sedition.

Jesus sees what they are trying to do; He sees their dishonesty and hardness of heart.  Instead of ignoring or humiliating them, Jesus decided to teach them a lesson.  And that lesson is as valid today as it was twenty centuries ago: Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.

As a Christian, each of us hold two citizenships, and each of these citizenships entail certain duties and provide certain benefits.  Our birth made us citizens of a particular nation here on earth, while our baptism made us citizens of heaven.  In many things, our two citizenships overlap, however eventually our earthly citizenship will come to an end while our heavenly one is forever.  It is obvious which of these two citizenships is most important — right?  Through the centuries, many Christian saints and martyrs have taught us that if we are ever forced to make a choice between the two, if Caesar ever tries to take what belongs to God, we must remain faithful to our true and everlasting homeland, Heaven, even if it means suffering painful consequences here on earth.  We only need to look at the examples of people like St. Polycarp and St. Thomas More.

So, how can we be good citizens to both here on earth and a good citizen in Christ’s Kingdom?  Let’s start by looking at what it means to be a good citizen of the Heavenly Kingdom.

Do we owe the “heavenly” IRS taxes?  All we need to do to answer that is open the Bible.  In the first chapter of Genesis, the first book in the Bible, we learn that all that we are, all that we possess, and all that we can hope for has come to us from God.  Just as the Roman coin bore the image of the Emperor who made it, so the human soul bears the “image and likeness” of God (Genesis 1:26), our Creator and our Father.  He called each one of us into existence; He wants each of us to exist, so that we can enter into and develop a personal relationship with him.  As the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “Coming from God, going toward God, man lives a fully human life only if he freely lives by his bond with God” (#44).  This means that we need to live as God intends us to live, and He has shown us how He wants us to live by sending His only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, as the model of every Christian life, and the friend of every human soul.  Therefore, giving to God what belongs to God means obeying His commandments, following the example of Christ Jesus our Savior, and following the teachings of the Church, which Christ established as His Mystical Body and breathed His own Holy Spirit into, endowing it with His Life.  Failure to do any of this is a kind of spiritual thievery.  

The duties of our earthly citizenship are just as real, although they will only last for our lifetime here on earth – not forever.  Jesus sums them up by saying, “Give to Caesar was belongs to Caesar,” where “Caesar” stands for the civic or political community.

When God created us, He did not make us self-sufficient beings, unlike a fern.  Rather, God created us as social beings, who not only need but enjoys the company and assistance of other human beings.  Our human nature requires us to live in communities – just look at how long it takes for a human baby to become capable of surviving on its own, much longer than any other mammal on the planet.  This social aspect of our nature is also part of our being created in God’s image.  After all, Jesus revealed to us that God is both one and three; the essence of God is love, the everlasting love between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Therefore, for us to live our human lives to the full, we must image the Divine Community, the Trinity, by living as responsible members our earthly communities.  These communities come together to form civil society, and they provide us with many benefits: protection from crime, public services, and opportunities for personal and family development.  And so, it is our strict duty of justice to give back to society through obedience to good laws and active collaboration, like paying taxes and doing community service.  In this sense, patriotism is a virtue in which every Christian should excel; we should be the most dependable and loyal citizens of all.

In non-democratic societies, that’s about where our civic duty stops.  However, in democratic societies, where all the citizens participate directly in the political process, we have two other responsibilities.

First, we have to make a decent effort to stay informed about the important political and cultural issues facing the community – this will enable us to vote intelligently and responsibly.

This is not always as easy as it sounds, because not all issues are on the same level, even though much of the news media fails to realize this.  It is precisely our Catholic faith, full of God’s revelation, that enables us to distinguish between foundational and secondary issues.  Treating unborn children like a disease, as abortion does, is a foundational injustice – what good are any of the other human rights if those innocent people never even make it out of the womb?  Marriage is a foundational issue – true marriage between one man and one woman is the DNA of human society; would you like someone to mess around with your DNA?  When we vote for political candidates and issues, we cannot pretend that those kinds of foundational issues are on the same level as other important but secondary issues like taxes, diplomacy, and alternative energy sources.  These secondary issues are like the walls of a house: you can knock out a wall or rearrange a room without the house falling down, but if you mess with the foundation, you lose the whole structure.  If foundational issues are at stake in an election, we must give them first priority.  Foundational issues are things that belong to God, not to Caesar, and when Caesar tries to take them over, we who are God’s children must defend them.

Staying informed about important current issues is only half of our democratic duty.  As Christians, we are called not only to help maintain civil society, but also to help improve it, to help build up a civilization of Christian justice and love.  In democratic societies, we have a unique opportunity to do this by making good use of the many conversations that happen in election years – conversations about social virtues and values that never even happen in non-democratic societies.  Many of our friends, colleagues, and neighbors want to make the right decisions in the voting booth, but don’t understand the difference between foundational and secondary issues.  They are hungry for the truth on these complicated issues.  As followers of Christ, we are called to feed the hungry, to let our light shine before others.  Sociological studies have repeatedly shown that the single biggest influence on how people vote is not the mass media, but the input and advice they get from friends and colleagues.  We should never be afraid to explain our point of view and the Church’s teachings in conversations around the water cooler or at dinner parties.  We are God’s messengers; we have something important to contribute to these conversations!  And if you think that you might need or want to learn more about being both a good citizen here on earth, and a good citizen of Christ’s Kingdom, I highly recommend a book that is on the New York Times Best Sellers’ list by Archbishop Charles Chaput, the bishop of Denver, Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life.  

The great Anglican political thinker Edmund Burke once said, “All it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”  In today’s largely democratic world, where good and evil are still fighting it out, let’s do something.  Let’s give to God what belongs to God (nothing less), and give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar (nothing more).

A priest friend of mine called me this week to ask how my new assignment is going, and I told him that I really like being at this parish and that I am learning a lot.  I am especially learning a lot about construction, as I accompany Fr. Mick to the various meetings regarding the preparations to begin Phase II of our building project.  One of the things that I have learned about construction is that you can only cover a certain percentage of the ground with impenetrable material.  The water needs to be able to drain somewhere.

As I prayed over the Scripture readings for this weekend’s Mass the word “impenetrable” kept coming to mind.  It seems to me that too often our hearts can be nearly impenetrable to God’s love for us.  Instead of opening ourselves to being struck by the beautiful things in life that draw us to the face of Christ, too often we allow ourselves to remain all closed up.

It all begins with desire.  What is it that we truly want?  What will really satisfy the deepest longing of our hearts?  

God knows that our hearts long for the infinite — infinite beauty, infinite truth, infinite love.  Being finite, neither we nor any of the people in our lives can satisfy this longing for the infinite in our hearts.  Only God, who is infinite, who is Love, can satisfy us.

In today’s readings we hear one of the most common metaphors for this fulfillment that we are all searching for, that of a banquet.  In our first reading from the Prophet Isaiah, God promises that He “will provide for all people a feast of rich food and choice wines….”  A banquet, such as the one described in Isaiah, would be an image of joy and camaraderie.  No sadness, no loneliness, no tears.  

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus picks up on this image, but He makes it a wedding banquet.  The Church describes the sacrament of marriage as a sign of Christ, the Bridegroom’s, union with His Bride, the Church.  So in this parable, Jesus is telling us that the we are all invited to participate in the joy of this heavenly wedding feast.

Sadly, this is where impenetrability can become an obstacle.  Like those who ignored the King’s invitation to go back to their farms and businesses, too often we allow lesser things to fill up our lives so that we think that we have no time for God.  We can get so caught up with the material world, that we turn a deaf ear to the Lord’s invitation to life, life to the full.  Unfortunately, for us, the material world will never be able to satisfy what we truly desire.  Oh, for a while material things might distract us from our deep desires and needs, but sooner or later they will become bland and we will start looking for something new, something else.  It can really become an addiction.  

If you ask someone who has suffered from alcoholism or a drug addiction, they will tell you that at first they used the drug because it made them feel good, but as they became addicted, they needed to use more and more of the drug just to stop feeling bad.  In their recovery, in order to break the cycle of addiction, they needed to surrender to a Higher Power.  In other words, they needed to do an honest appraisal of what do they truly desire deep down, and they came to realize that only by surrendering to this Power greater than themselves could they find that which set them free and truly satisfied the needs of their hearts.  As Christians we know that that Higher Power took on our human nature and is Jesus Christ.  Like the Prophet Ezekiel, we often need to pray that the Lord will break open our stony, impenetrable hearts, and give us instead soft, fleshy hearts that will allow His love and grace to penetrate into.

Jesus addressed this parable to the chef priests and elders who often sneered at Him for eating with sinners.  They had very stony hearts, and they thought that God issued His invitation only to the elect few.  However, Jesus makes it clear that the invitation goes out to all people.  God wants all of us to be saved.  He wants to share His life with everyone.

If we read only the short form of the parable, we would stop there, but I think the second part of the parable is also important.  At first we might it seem rather rude or even mean for the King to throw out the man who attended the wedding banquet without being properly dressed.  However, this addresses another common problem among Jesus’ followers.  We can become too casual with God.  Yes, Jesus is our friend, but He is also our Lord and Savior.  He is Christ the King!  The second part of this parable warns us that while God extends His invitation to all, no one can accept the invitation casually.

There was a time in the Church’s history where there was such a strong emphasis on the need for adequate preparation in order to receive Holy Communion, that many people developed great fears about receiving the sacrament unworthily that they often did not come to receive the Eucharist.  Or they saw receiving Holy Communion as a reward for making a good Confession.

Today there is a greater emphasis on the Eucharist being a medicine for the spiritually sick, the sinner.  This can lead to another danger, that both Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II before him has warn us against, of people receiving the Eucharist casually, with no preparation at all.  St. Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians (11:27-31) tells us that such casualness in regards to Holy Communion can be spiritually harmful.

God does not want us to be fearful about coming to His table of the Eucharist, but He does want us to be careful.  The Lord longs to fill us up with His goodness, His power, and His love.

However, God cannot fill us up unless we are empty.  We must confess our need for His love, His power, and His goodness.  We need to acknowledge our own unworthiness, and ask His forgiveness for our sins.

It is only in our need, in our weakness that we can sing with the Prophet Isaiah and all the Faithful as we approach the Table of the Lord’s Body and Blood, “Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us!  This is the Lord for whom we looked; let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!”